Denver is digging the Olympics. From Aug. 8-20, Denver averages a 24.7 rating and 43 share (or percent of the viewing audience), ranking No. 1 among all metered markets.

Overall, the Beijing

[photopress:oly2.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

summer games have been good to NBC, very very good. As of today, with a cumulative 206 million viewers, they are the second most-watched event in TV history, after the Lillehammer winter games. And in three days’ less time than Lillehammer.

That 206 million is 13 million more than watched in the first 13 days for Athens (193 million) and 5 million more than the Atlanta Games (201 million). For the moment, the Atlanta telecast holds the record at 209 million over 17 days in 1996, making it the most-viewed television event in U.S. history.

As Michael Phelps would tell you, records are made to be broken.

Some part of the coverage has been sampled in more than 85 percent of all U.S. television homes.

NBC is touting its ratings for the Olympics as proof of the vitality of broadcast TV. The audience may be fragmented, but the network still serves as a gathering place for special events.

It’s true: the first 12 days of Summer Games coverage from Beijing

[photopress:olyimages.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

surpassed the 17-day total for Athens.

The Beijing Olympics 12-day average primetime viewership is 29.3 million, 12 percent ahead of Athens in 2004 (26.1 million). To date, the 1996 Atlanta games (209 million over 17 days) stand as the most-watched U.S. television event in history.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.